President Obama has presided over policies that have resulted in horrific war crimes against civilians (mainly children), a corrupt corporatocracy, and a dragnet surveillance state. Yet in a last ditch effort to preserve his legacy, he is pursuing policies that will pacify the public’s view of his crimes, which are no different than most other presidents before him regardless of political party. We must realize that he will only pursue legacy policies up to the point it upsets his masters in the banking industry that installed him in office, just like most other presidents since Woodrow Wilson.

The argument given by Obama apologists leading up to the 2012 re-election was that if we re-elected him he would end the wars, the surveillance, the corporate/banking collusion, and the erosion of the Bill of Rights.

The line must be drawn at dead children. This is the commander in chief and he had every ability to stop these atrocities in a timely fashion. It is very important that we as a people distinguish between pragmatism and compromise. Being against the bombing of children is not being a purist; it is being human.

When faced with the prospect of analyzing the current rise of ISIS, or the misinformed albeit widely accepted threat of Russia, or that of Iran, it is imperative that we keep in mind a few key points.

One of these is the US foreign policy strategy of containment, or more aptly, the strategy of limiting the power of anyone who challenges the United States’ hegemony on the global chessboard. The memo depicting this strategy was penned under the supervision of influential neo-conservative statesmen Paul Wolfowitz in 1992, thus dubbed the “Wolfowitz doctrine,” and was not intended for public release. I would argue strongly that the evidence of the past decades suggests that this is still the dominant foreign policy doctrine that has been followed under both the Bush and Obama administrations.

The preeminent strategy outlined therein is to “establish and protect a new order,” that accounts for “the interests of the advanced industrial nations to discourage them from challenging our leadership or seeking to overturn the established political and economic order.” The goal is to protect a world order in which the United States is the supreme power, and to stop any nation who seeks to challenge this dominance and overturn America’s preeminent position.